Wanted: Our Joseph Welch in 2024
Joseph Welch may not be a household name, but on June 9, 1954, the Boston attorney made an invaluable contribution to our nation’s democracy when he uttered the famous words, “Have you no sense of decency sir?” Overnight, the McCarthy era came to an end.
Joseph McCarthy, Senator from Wisconsin, soared to public attention in 1950 when he alleged that hundreds of communists had infiltrated the State Department and other federal agencies. His anti-communist campaign struck the heart of Cold War America’s fears. In 1953 McCarthy became Chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a platform that provided him singular focus on alleged communists. In both public and private hearings, He accused hundreds, called scores of witnesses, alienated the democratic members of the committee to the point they all resigned, and called impromptu or remote hearings that made it difficult for even his Republican peers to attend. McCarthy often held hearings solo, along with his trusty council, infamous attorney Roy Cohn.
In 1954 McCarthy picked a fight with the US Army, charging them with lax security at a top-secret facility. The army countered that McCarthy had requested preferential draft treatment for one of his aides. Joseph Welch represented the army during thirty days of publicly televised hearings. Before Watergate. Before Ira-Contra. Before Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. Before Benghazi. Before Kavanaugh, Cohen, and Mueller.
On Day 30, with his back against the wall facing a deadline to produce the 130 names of purported communists, McCarthy accused Attorney Welch’s associate, Fred Fisher, of belonging to the National Lawyers Guild, the legal arm of the Communist Party. It was a familiar McCarthy ploy — to distract deadlines and facts by planting fear with more accusations. But Joseph Welch did not respond by crumbling.
Joseph Welch knew that Fred Fisher had belonged to the National lawyers Guild in his youth. He and Fred had predetermined that Fred should not be involved in this hearing. But McCarthy’s out-of-left-field accusation on national television infuriated Welch to rise above legalese with an emotional plea that changed the mindset of our nation:
Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us. … Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad…
When McCarthy doubled down with more attacks on Fisher, Welch plunged his rhetorical blow:
Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild … Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
The parallels between June 1954 and today are uncanny.
First there is the obvious: that after Roy Cohn cut his fangs on Joseph McCarthy, he became a prominent advisor to Donald Trump.
Second, there is the strategic. Just like McCarthy, Trump is long on accusation and heavy on invoking fear. When pressed, his response is always: double down, deny, and reaccuse at a higher level.
Third, there is the clash that so-called saviors of the common folk stir up against the educated elite with their established institutions. McCarthy began his allegations against the State Department and took his last stand against a Harvard grad. Trump supposedly battles the ‘Deep State’ (though Federal employment grew under his Presidency) and any Ivy-league school (though Trump attended one).
Finally, is the reality that neither Joseph McCarthy nor Donald Trump has any sense of decency. McCarthy used the term ‘communist’ to demean other human beings. Trump uses blunter words: Nazi, vermin, rapists.
But the most important, and stupefying, parallel between 1954 is not between McCarthy and Trump. It is between us — then — and us — now. How have we, as a nation, allowed these two men to capture our attention, and hold it, spellbound? In the early 1950’s Joseph McCarthy made headline news again and again. In our own era, we have allowed Trump to dominate our media for over a decade. The result of bestowing this influence upon him is that we have become meaner, more divisive, more tribal, more prejudiced, less informed, and more skeptical.
In the early 1950’s McCarthy’s communist accusations fed into our national anxieties, and exacerbated them. In the 2010’s and 2020’s Trump’s dark vision of a dangerous world that requires a strongman leader with unlimited authority, feeds our own fear that the world is too complicated for something as naïve as democracy. Besides, democracy requires real effort on the part of every citizen to succeed, while a strongman promises to relieve us that load, without numerating the many freedoms we will lose in the process.
Yet, in 1954, a relatively unknown, unelected citizen was able to halt Joseph McCarthy in his tracks. By June 7, 1954 McCarthyism was dead. McCarthy was sanctioned by the Senate, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the Press.
Who is willing — and able — to do that today? Republicans elected to high positions in the past: George H.W. Bush, Mike Pence, Dick Cheney, have come out against Trump, to little apparent effect. Jack Smith’s indictments don’t appear to nudge Trump’s popularity. Nor E. Jean Carroll’s successful suit; nor Judge Engoron’s required bonds, not even Trump’s inability to raise the cash he’s so often boasted about in order to pay the bonds.
We Americans have received more than enough warnings — and evidence — to stop the disaster of Donald Trump and turn the man away. And yet we don’t do so.
One hallmark of the MAGA creed is that it harkens to a better time in America. That time, fantasy though it may be, is usually the 1950’s, a period of unprecedented national identity, economic growth, and international dominance: if you were a white man. What the MAGA-folk never invoke is that during that same decade the American populace woke up — quick — from a dangerous illusion, and righted their course.
I say we emulate the 1950’s all over again. Snap out of our fascination with Donald Trump. Ignore him. Censor him. Maybe even him send him to jail. But please, please, don’t elect him.
Mr. Welch 2024: we are waiting for you to bring us to our senses.
